Memoirs of a Casablancan Fool
by Squirrel Crumpet
Summary: Horo is delegated the task of writing 20 memoirs. As a string of sober and whimsical reminiscences are relieved, he delves deep into the past, thrusting the memories that were withheld into the present.
1. Origins

_Dedicated to: **KimBob** whose "gentlemanly" airs make me want to dance. To **Mernda-chan **also, whose boundless energy & unsurpassable joy has caused me to see the light... Last, and certainly not least, is **Sparrow**, whose undying faith is simultaneously comical and endearing.

* * *

_

**Memoirs of a Casablancan Fool**

"Up yours, Casablanca!" And that was how it all began. Well, not really. But it did start something. This phrase paved the way for the start of his memoirs; it had nothing to do with the course of his life. Yet he treasured it for its simplicity and the seamless genius behind it.

He led a happy, carefree life, his thoughts mostly being of food. He said, "Up yours, Casablanca!" every chance he got, whether it was relevant to the matter at hand or not. That is, until the one day he hoped he would live to reflect upon. The day when his English teacher assigned the tremendous task of writing a collection of memoirs.

"We live life moment by moment. Don't let them pass you by. Write them down, so that one day when you are as frail and as old as I am, you'll remember what mattered most." Those were the exact words his sensei had spoken.

He was to write twenty different memoirs, and for each he had to explain why those particular events made a lasting impression upon him. "This is hard! I can only think of _one thing_, sensei!" he wailed when it was time to write.

"Perhaps you are thinking too hard," his English teacher said, examining the boy's head banging upon the surface of a hard classroom desk. "Think about...the first time you learned how to write your name. Or the time you learned how to ride a bike without training wheels. The first time you got a—"

"Okay, I get it!" Horo said, cutting in. He had to stop his teacher before the man went to far and talked his short attention span to death. His professor walked back to his desk and took a seat, smiling toothily at his students.

"Up yours, Casablanca!" Horo said giddily, causing his fellow classmates to survey him as though he were some lunatic taken off the streets and placed in their classroom for mere entertainment.

He settled down and started writing when inspiration came. Although he wrote slowly and worked until the end of class, he produced a memoir that should merit, at the very least, a parade and national holiday in his name.

As the bell rang and signified the end of the day, the students hurriedly gathered their possessions and left. Horo trailed behind in their wake, papers flying every which way.

It was late at night, and darkness crept around everything like a shadow endowed with its own, eerie legs that were able to glide without being attached to a master. Horo, with the lure of sleep imminent, could not resist re-reading his memoir. It was calling to him, groveling, begging to be read...

* * *

**The Origin of My Favorite Phrase**  
_by Horo Horo Usui _

I like stupid phrases, especially ones that no one understands but me. One that should be a classic is "Up yours, Casablanca!" As I am writing this, I have been seized by giggles. It's just that funny. The origin of my favorite phrase came to be on a night engulfed by a documentary of Casablanca.

The forbidding skies of Japan signified the start of a depressing day as I made my way towards school. I was none too happy for my sister had decided to add additional training to my already tiring regime. "You're pitiful, Horo-nii!" she said, watching me with the utmost disgust earlier that morning. "You can't even lift a barbell with two stuffed animals on either side!"

I told her that I could lift a bag of marshmallows, which was true. That only made herreign of terror more frightening than before. Her eyes were blazing and she forced me to carry her to school, piggyback style. Only I kept on dropping her. She told me that if I dropped her one more time, it would be the end of Horo Horo Usui as I knew him, which could only mean toilet duty for me. Eternal toilet duty without breaks, not even for breathing.

I shuddered at the thought of having my head shoved down a toilet. I could almost feel the toilet water washing over my head repetitively... When we had made it to school, delightful, grinding, school, I deposited Pirka carefully on the ground and ran into several pedestrians before entering the building.

When I made my grand entrance, there it was. In the middle of the hustle and bustle known as the student body, there stood the most wonderful thing I had ever seen—an artificial squirrel, who was cheerily throwing paper towards the sky. In several motions, the squirrel threw the paper up, watched it fall down, picked up the papers, and repeated the same process over and over again.

I ran up to my former hero and gave him a nice, swift, hard kick in the bum. How could this artificial being impersonate the almighty nature of a squirrel? I told him, "Up yours, Casablanca!" and ran away without the slightest idea of where I was going.

And when I got there, my vision was obscured by pink. Everything was so _pink,_ it occurred to me that I might be in the female portion of the world, the place where they apply war paint and take a dump. It was strange, really, how it was deserted and stunningly quiet. I chose a random stall and kicked the door aside.

As I sat on a toilet seat, not actually taking a dump, in that secluded stall, I pondered the mysteries of life and what I had just said. Where did that phrase come from? It was then that it occurred to me. Last night, Pirka made me watch some stupid documentary on Casablanca, a city in Morocco.

I had drawn nothing from that documentary, though at the end of it, I had concluded that one day, I should like to journey to Casablanca and hug the scenery.

The only thing I could think of when watching people ride donkeys off into the sunset was the phrase "Up yours, Casablanca!" I said that single phrase so often during the course of the night that it drove my sister became partially insane and stated that she would never let me watch anything educational ever again.

It's good to have an imaginative mind, enabling you to say things that no one else comprehends.

I love the phrase "Up yours, Casablanca!" By far, it's the best phrase ever known by mankind. It has changed the way I live and will continue doing so. Not only by its whimsical nature but also by the way it allows for more stupidity in the world. It is puzzling and is the source of unforeseen laughter. It is an enigma.

Each time I said that phrase, I remember thinking: _I will be the vessel of flesh where this phrase can inhabit. I will spread its infectious power so that laughter's reign will never die out. _

_(end memoir)

* * *

_

"That's probably the single most profound thing I have ever written," Horo said, suppressing a yawn. "I just..." But he never finished what he was about to say, for sleep had come, and it was lifting all traces of thought. He slept with a self satisfied expression on his face, his beloved memoir clutched tightly in one hand.

* * *

AN: I wanted to write something that's from a different perspective, because different is fun! Hooray for things that squeak and prance! 


	2. Pieces

**I Can Hear the Sound of Crackers Tap Dancing in Their Box  
**_by Horo Horo Usui_

I am a boy of the wild at heart. The elements call to me and I can hear them. There is a different kind of beckoning than that of nature's, and it has made itself clear in my stomach and my mind. I am talking, of course, about the all-powerful force called "food".

A young, precocious and slightly naïve boy of three, food was my forever friend. It was during this phase of my life that I learned how to hold a rice cracker securely in my hand without crushing it to smithereens. Being so taken with edible objects, I stuffed anything in my mouth that remotely resembled food.

Because of this, my younger sister, Pirka, was forever locking me in the upstairs bathroom, padlocking me to the toilet. I broke out anyway when my stomach voiced its hunger, and after eating whatever was available, I would quickly chain myself to the toilet once more without her being any the wiser.

A food related mystery eluded me so much that I sacrificed several stuffed animals in my thirst for knowledge. (They became unwilling test subjects.) I didn't understand why crackers made a strange, rattling noise when you pressed your ear on the side of the box. Then, on Christmas, my auntie Yasuaki gave me a box of crackers, commemorating the proudest event of my life, the event in which I had learned how to hold a cracker properly so as to not damage it.

She had told me that if I listened carefully, I could hear the sound of several crackers performing their next tap dancing number. I did so, and sure enough, the sound of tap shoes hitting the ground resonated. I asked her why I couldn't see them perform, and she had replied, "They're too shy, Horo. When you open the box and see them in those orderly rows, it means that they were dancing away minutes ago."

Her theory explained so many things I couldn't quite comprehend before. It explained why crackers were sometimes broken at the bottom of the box, most likely from falling off the stage while performing a lively tap dance. This same theory explained the irritating crumbs and flecks of cracker as well, which were the tears of a cracker audience saddened by a dismal performance.

I held on very tightly to this theory, believing it to be true for the many years ahead. Suddenly, my perfectly arranged world of tap dancing crackers shattered on the day of aunt Yasuyaki's death. She was thirty years old--I was six--and she was steadily losing the race against cancer. On her deathbed, she had asked to see me alone.

Oba-san, pale and drained of life, told me that I was living a lie. She told me to please snap out of it, and that she had only told me that ridiculous story because my parents were tired of the usual round of questions like "Is there such a thing as cracker abuse?" What affected me profoundly was what she said next. "Crackers don't tap dance, Horo. They're just solid, carbohydrate infested, machine processed food."

Then, with tears in my eyes as her limp arm patted me on the back in a soothing manner, I told her it wasn't nice to lie to little children. She replied, "That's the beauty of adulthood. You get to lie to gullible young children!" Though it sounded harsh, she smiled as she said it, and it made me happy knowing that I too would one day be able to tell tales of harmless fancy.

Those were her last words to me.

Her funeral was a quiet affair and only family and close friends attended. Nestled between her arm and torso is a box of yummy, pre—packaged, already salted crackers. I stood back a bit to admire the effect, and before I knew it, I had sat down on the steps leading up to the coffin and was crying as though the sun would never rise again.

When I'd regained a bit of my composure and dared to look around, Pirka had settled herself adjacent to me, watching intently as my tears formed a large puddle at the foot of the coffin steps.

"That's what old people do," she started hesitantly. "They die." I stared at my sister through tear-blurred eyes, scrutinizing her, finally saying, "Who're kidding? It was the prime of her life."

"And how would you know this?" Pirka said, raising her eyebrows ever higher in inquiry. "Because there are some things, like crackers, that, even if you're as old as the dickens, you can still be able to find joy in it and are able to cherish it." I said solemnly as a smile escaped.

Oba-san had left me something without even knowing it. She had left, on Earth, a piece of herself that I could revisit at will. And sometimes, when it's just a cracker box and me, I press it closely to my ear, proceeding to open it in order to see the uniform rows. And in that split second of opening and peering inside, I could've sworn I saw every single crisp, thin biscuit tap dancing, swaying to an unknown beat.

_(end memoir)

* * *

_

The sensei of classroom 239 looked briefly at the memoir, and then at the boy to whom it belonged, finally laughing like mad. 

"Wh-what did you think?" Horo said apprehensively.

"It's...it's...got a lot of BS," the sensei replied, tears of mirth gliding down his cheeks.

"BS?" Horo repeated blankly.

"Beautiful stuff, my boy, beautiful stuff!"

"Oh! Ha ha! Very funny, sensei!" Horo said, laughing weakly.

"But you shouldn't have shown this to me now," his sensei said, going from laughing lunatic to professional teacher mode. "Although this was a bag of laughs, I don't want to see any more memoirs until all twenty have been completed, do you hear me, boy?"

"Blorg!" Horo said, causing his sensei to look at him strangely. "Um, I meant, sir yes sir!"

"Good. Now run along and finish the other 18,"

"What? _EIGHTEEN_? THERE ARE _EIGHTEEN _LEFT?"

"Right you are, for a grand total of twenty. Go away and leave your teacher to his devices, there's a good chap!" his sensei said, indicating an oversized marshmallow that he was pummeling and sniffing excitedly.

Horo turned to take his leave when his sensei called out.

"Oh, and one more thing, boy."

"What is it?"

"You never saw anything." his sensei said, deflating the marshmallow with a triumphant giggle as he took another one out, this time to doodle on.

* * *

_Oba-san_: aunt

_Blorg:_ a word the authoress created that has no set meaning

* * *

**lymerai:** You spoke at length about things that squeaked, and it was rather yummy to read. I was not aware of such startling news, and now I feel rather intelligent for knowing that bit of information.

**Yuki KIKI: **It's hard to stay away from adding excessive amounts of stupidity because I do enjoy being stupid a great deal... huh? I really, truly kept Horo in character? In truth, I wrote Horo's memoirs as though it were I in his position, thus leading people to believe that I can actually write people as IC, which, I assure you, isn't true at all.

**kittykid:** Yes, you're welcome! I wanted everyone to feel loved, although I do think I've overdone the dedications a bit. Ah, well, what is a story without it being supported by wonderful people, ne?


End file.
